Antiskid materials, antiskid coatings, and adhesive antiskid sheets are commonly used in applications such as steps, ladders, manufacturing equipment, machinery, firearms, vehicles, exercise equipment, and sporting goods. Adhesive antiskid sheets are almost always used with skateboards. In this regard, skateboarding is a wonderful sport that has become more popular with America's youth than little league baseball, Pop Warner football, and other traditional sporting activities. A skateboard includes the following fundamental components: a deck; four wheels; and two trucks that attach the wheels to the deck and which serve as turning mechanisms for the skateboard. “Grip tape” is a form of adhesive antiskid sheet that is almost always applied to the top surface of the deck. The exposed surface of the grip tape is a gritty, sandpaper-like surface that provides friction and grip when the skateboarder stands on the deck. Historically, grip tape has been sold either in bulk rolls having a sheet width of approximately nine to twelve inches, in pre-cut rectangular sheets that contain enough area to cover the surface of one skateboard deck, or in smaller pre-cut patches (e.g., squares, rectangles, or circles).
A straightforward “grip tape job” entails applying a pre-cut deck sized sheet of grip tape onto the riding or upper surface of the skateboard deck. To accomplish this, the paper backing is removed from the entire sheet (which in most cases is approximately 9 inches wide and 36 inches long) to expose the adhesive layer. The adhesive side is then applied to the skateboard deck and the grip tape is pressed onto the deck to increase the effectiveness of the adhesive. Thereafter, the edges are trimmed around the perimeter of the deck such that virtually the entire riding surface of the deck is covered with grip tape.
Some skateboarders design creative grip tape art on their decks by painstakingly cutting pieces from large sheets of grip tape and arranging the individual pieces on their decks. For example, a skateboarder can create a checkerboard pattern on his or her deck by cutting small squares from a sheet of grip tape and placing them onto the deck in the appropriate pattern. Complicated and customized grip jobs can take many hours to complete, may require lots of trial and error, and may require more than one sheet of grip tape to complete the job. Accordingly, such individualized and one-off grip tape designs can be time consuming, expensive, and tedious. Due to the inherently short lifespan of a skateboard deck, most skateboarders would rather be spending time skateboarding than creating customized grip jobs that may only see the light of day for a month or two.